to be fed up of people not checking the truth of warnings before they share them?

There are some brilliant sites like hoax-slayer, snopes etc but friends keep on sharing rubbish links on facebook and by email which I think are just designed to scare people. It also detracts from the real things which it can be beneficial to share.

I just commented to one friend that her link was a hoax and she said that she thought it was better to share it anyway in case it did happen!

Yes dh and I do the same with hoax slayer. You get some terrible crap circulated. I work in a hospital and there was one recently which went from group to group of very senior and bright people before somebody considerably less well paid pointed out it was nonsense.

I'm with you - gets me seriously riled. My personal favourite is the 'backwards pin at cash machine if you are being robbed' one. How many people think this true? They will be very disappointed when the police don't roll up.....

God I hate this!!! And yes all the "1000000 likes to get x" crap. Does anyone really thing that by pressing 'like' on a picture on FB means that some poor person will get life saving treatment or whatever they want at the time!?

Eventually, people stop sending them. Though whether that just means they are sending just as much crap to everyone else and have only dropped me from the list, I don't know!

So many people are paranoid about crap that is a total wind-up, and have their heads so full of it that they can't spot the genuine things they ought to worry about. It doesn't take long to find out in most cases.

Yes, it really annoys me. One of my relatives does it repeatedly on facebook. When I've linked to snopes he comes out with 'well, better safe than sorry'.

You really think it's better to warn people that if they see a baby seat in the road, or a crashed car, they'd be 'better safe than sorry', so they should drive on an ignore it in case it's a totally discredited hoax trap?

This is one of my particular bugbears. Especially when committed by people you'd expect to have more commonsense.

Yesterday, someone I know to be intelligent and sensible posted one of these pieces of questionable shyte on FB and actually wrote "I'm not sure if this is true but thought I'd better share it."! FFS! If you can take the time to write an accompanying commentary, why not spend that time checking it out with snopes or hoax slayer instead?

I do reply politely with the relevant hoax slaying link but yes, it is amazing how huffily this can be received.

I was going to start a thread about this the other day. So annoying. And a friend pointed out that what's really sad is the weirdos who take the time to mock up the fake police/hospital/etc notices! I saw the baby seat one recently twice - supposedly done by police in 2 different countries!!! FFS.

I also hate those messages that do highlight an important cause, and you read through it thinking "yes, this one is worth sharing", until you get to the end where it says "ONLY decent, caring people will share this! I can predict which of my friends will be intelligent enough to share! I bet YOU don't have the compassion to post it even for one hour!".

At which point my finger moves away from the 'share' button and I think, off you fuck then!